A frightening atmosphere for your front yard is not difficult to accomplish, but it will mean choosing the best outdoor Halloween decor. Remember that larger decorations will be more visible from the street or from across the yard, but too many large pieces can be unappealing and make the yard look too crowded. Choose a few large pieces and then accent them with smaller decorations. Before you purchase any items for Halloween, however, it helps to choose a theme for your decorations. A ghostly graveyard, or perhaps a haunted pumpkin patch, may be your choice.

The best way to choose a theme for your outdoor Halloween decor is to determine what type of Halloween revelers you want to attract. If you want younger trick-or-treaters to come to your door, think about outdoor Halloween decor that will be a little bit scary but more inviting and fun. For an older crowd, truly frightening or gory decorations may be more appropriate. For an all-ages appeal, mix scary decorations with fun ones. Try to be consistent in terms of theme to get the most appropriate feel for the yard; try to avoid including elements that may look anomalous or otherwise out of place with the rest of the decorations.

Make sure visitors have an obvious and well lit path to travel through the yard. This will ensure each visitor's safety, and it will also ensure visitors see the outdoor Halloween decor you have chosen. Consider lighting the pathway with string lights; the color orange is a good choice to stay in keeping with the Halloween mood. It is a great idea to place several pumpkins or jack o'lanterns throughout the yard; if candles are too much trouble or present too much of a fire hazard, small, battery-operated lights can be purchased instead.

A cost-free way to improve the outdoor Halloween decor is to stop maintaining the yard a few weeks before Halloween. This will allow leaves to congregate on the lawn and the grass to brown slightly, which will give the yard a frightening aesthetic that is in keeping with the Halloween mood. You can further enhance the look of decay by scattering spider webs around the yard; this can be done using cotton batting. Pulling the cotton apart so a thin web forms is ideal, and the webs can be stretched onto fences, doors, railings, and bushes.

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